


Have Mercy On Me, Mercy My Heart

by DefaltManifesto



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Crying, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, Gen, Nightmares, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Reconciliation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-10
Updated: 2018-06-10
Packaged: 2019-05-20 17:21:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14898773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DefaltManifesto/pseuds/DefaltManifesto
Summary: Peter finishes junior year with perfect grades and more criminals behind bars than the cops know what to do with. It could be a sign he’s adjusted well.Tony knows what frantic avoidance looks like though.But he doesn’t call. He doesn’t trust himself enough to.





	Have Mercy On Me, Mercy My Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Third time attempting to post this so if you see duplicates of it let me know so I can remove one of them. Comments are loved. Title from Mercy by Lewis Capaldi

Tony waits for the nightmares to stop even though he knows they never will. They’ll lessen, change, morph into something new. He just wants a break from watching Peter fade away while apologizing for a failure that wasn’t his to shoulder.

Most nights find him sitting on a couch watching dumb infomercials because the 2AM news cycle is pointless and movies long ago lost their appeal. He must do something to distract from the need to call Peter. He’s the adult and he’s the one who should be there for Peter, even if Peter now has the responsibility of an Avenger, not the other way around.

He inevitably wakes up curled up on the couch with a blanket draped over his shoulders and the sound of Bruce making coffee in the kitchen. The world is too busy cleaning up their lives to bother with the politics of super heroes so the whole team finds themselves in the new home.

Even Steve and Bucky.

He was still getting used to them being around and they kept their distance likely for the same reason. Bruce had no problem any of them. After spending two years as the Hulk, he was more honest and free with his emotions than he’d ever been, not hesitating to join Tony wherever he was or announce to Thor he needed company. Tony loses track of the times he finds them on the couch together, asleep with their heads resting atop of one another. He sticks close to Tony in the mornings though. He makes sure Tony’s eating and not losing himself in the lab for too many hours and it should be smothering, but instead it’s just nice to know someone is watching out for him when he can’t watch out for himself.

“What are they about?” Bruce asks.

Tony sits up, letting the blanket slide into his lap. He doesn’t turn and look at Bruce, unable to bring himself to that level of commitment to a conversation so early in the morning.

“It’s not important,” Tony says. “They’re just dreams, we all have them.”

Especially now. Half the population doubtless woke up in the dead of night needing reassurance that their loved ones were still around.

“Hm,” Bruce says, but he doesn’t push.

He hands Tony a plate with peanut butter toast on the way to his lab with a smile.

 

-.-

 

Peter doesn’t call. Tony checks up on him once and Peter responds with a fake cheer that makes his heart ache. The kid tries hard, harder than Tony ever did. Faced with PTSD, nightmares, and an impending sense of oncoming death, he leapt from tailspin to breakdown over and over again, but Peter finishes junior year with perfect grades and more criminals behind bars than the cops know what to do with. It could be a sign he’s adjusted well.

Tony knows what frantic avoidance looks like though.

But he doesn’t call. He doesn’t trust himself enough to.

 

-.-

 

Summer comes uneventfully. The Avengers haven’t had need to assemble and instead go on smaller one or two-man team missions for whatever Fury or Hill put them to. Steve, Sam, and Bucky are never asked. They’re part of the Avengers but the lack of formal acknowledgment from the United Nations remains. It doesn’t stop them from leaving and investigating Hydra bases. They’ve reconciled what happened and Tony would even say he and Steve were friends again, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t happier when Bucky is out of the mansion.

He’s not expecting a phone call from Peter in the middle of a Wednesday afternoon.

“Hi Mr. Stark! It’s kind of short notice but I don’t know I was thinking I could crash here for the summer I mean I am an Avenger and everything now so. That’s fine right?”

“Here as in-“

“I’m outside the front door but the hand scanner doesn’t let me in. Did you not key it for me?”

Tony gets up and heads for the door, trying and failing to hide his stunned shock when he sees Peter standing there with his backpack and small suitcase. He hangs up his phone and Peter does the same with an awkward smile.

“I…should’ve called, huh?” Peter asks. The kid can’t act for shit. He wears his uncertainty and desperation plainly in his eyes.

"No, it’s fine, you’re right,” Tony says, stepping back as he slips his phone into his pocket. “You’re an Avenger. This is your home too, though not completely until you’re eighteen. I don’t want a custody battle with your Aunt.”

"Right, right. I don’t think I could get to school from here without leaving like…way too early in the morning anyways,” Peter says with a nervous laugh.

“Right…” Tony swallows, feeling for the first time in a long time that he has no idea what to say to the kid. “I’m actually going out. You remember the way to your room?”

Peter nods and moves past him, apparently as eager to get away from the awkward tension as he is. Tony lets out a long breath and heads for the garage.

 

-.-

 

Tony wakes up in the early hours of the morning with a sharp inhale of breath. It was Obadiah this time, a nightmare he hasn’t had in years but one that leaves his chest aching and his lungs burning like he can’t take in a breath. He sits up and the lights come on at a low 10% as he takes counted breaths. It doesn’t help, so instead he throws the covers off and heads for the main living room and kitchen, intent on pacing until exhaustion takes him back under, but when he arrives it’s to Peter having already taken his spot.

He doesn’t notice Tony. He paces along the wall of windows that look out at the woods, arms wrapped around himself and looking as small and frail as Tony feels. The lights here are dim too. Peter can’t see his own reflection let alone Tony’s in the window. Tony coughs.

Peter starts, shoulder banging into the window. “M-Mr. Stark! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to…I didn’t want to wake anyone.”

"You didn’t,” Tony says, feeling as though there’s something in that statement he’s missing. There’s nothing like seeing Peter covered in cold sweat with dilated eyes that pushes aside his panic and helps him focus. He heads for the coffee machine in the small half kitchen. “Coffee?”

“Please,” Peter says. He looks one more time out the window before heading for the couch. “It doesn’t do anything. Caffeine I mean. The taste helps wake me up though, like the rest of me remembers what it used to do. Weird huh?”

"Placebo effects are impressive,” Tony says as he hits the start button. He stays by the counter, leaning back against it and watching the back of Peter’s head and the way his shoulders are slouched up around his ears. “Nightmares?”

Peter doesn’t say anything. He just nods.

“All the rooms are soundproof. You don’t have to worry about waking anyone,” Tony says, because he has a feeling he knows why Peter is here now.

“That’s g-good,” Peter says. His voice cracks around the words and Tony tries to keep calm when he sees Peter’s shoulders tremble. “Aunt May kept…I kept waking her up. The neighbors called CPS because I was screaming so much.”

Guilt hits Tony hard, robbing him of his breath. “You-“

“It’s fine,” Peter says. “I’ve got night terrors down in my medical file so it wasn’t a big deal but I just wanted her to be able to sleep.”

Tony wants to apologize. Sure, he didn’t drag Peter into this life. A god damn radioactive spider did, and sure Tony built his suits and mentored him but if he didn’t, Peter would be on his own doing it with the likelihood of dying all the higher. The rationalizations are useless now in the face of Peter’s reality.

He’d had over thirty years of life under his belt by the time Afghanistan happened. Peter was newly sixteen and had died and come back, had seen war and death on a scale that didn’t exist on Earth prior to their confrontation with Thanos. The urge to run away and leave Peter on his own grips his heart tight, squeezing it in a way that he knows is purely imagined but feels so much like shrapnel digging in he wants to throw up.

It isn’t until Peter’s standing in front of him with concerned eyes, puffy and red, that he realizes he’s been panicking.

“Mr. Stark…” Peter says.

"I’m sorry,” Tony chokes out. He brushes past Peter and flees.

 

-.-

 

Two days later, Bucky finds him. He doesn’t ambush him, which is politer than anyone else in their little dysfunctional super hero family, but Tony is pretty sure that’s only because Friday won’t open the lab doors without his permission. Tony knows he can refuse. Bucky probably wouldn’t be offended. He doesn’t though.

“The kid is going home,” Bucky says, standing awkwardly in the middle of the lab. His eyes glance around but if Tony hadn’t been looking so intently he knows he wouldn’t have caught the one sign that the man is uncomfortable. “But he shouldn’t.”

“Why didn’t he say something to me?” Tony asks, mostly to himself. He wipes the screen away to look at Bucky head on.

“Because you probably said something that made him feel like a burden,” Bucky says.

Tony’s eyes narrow. “Of course you assume it’s-“

"He only talks to you,” Bucky says. “It would’ve had to be you.”

"That…is a fair point,” Tony says, deflating. “Look, we ran into each other his first night here and he…needed reassurance. I left him when he tried to talk.”

“Oof.”

Tony tilts his head to the side and Bucky squints at him before frowning.

“Shuri says it a lot. I…probably used it wrong,” Bucky says. “I was trying to say that was stupid of you. He’s a kid.”

“I know that,” Tony says, voice sharpening. “But I can’t…I can’t be what he needs, not right now.”         

“Too bad, you’re the only one he trusts,” Bucky says. “You don’t get the luxury of not being there for him, just like Steve didn’t get the luxury with me.”

Tony, for the first time in his life, bites his tongue. Because Bucky is right. And more than that, he _knows_ Bucky is right.

“How?” Tony asks. “How do I be there?”

“Fuck if I know. Ask Steve. I’ll tell Peter to stay,” Buck says.

Tony sighs and watches him leave. Then, against his worst kind of judgment, he heads for Steve’s room.

 

-.-

 

Steve looks tired. He has since he channeled some of the power of the stones for Thor, drained and thinner than before. Oh, he still has muscle and could lay any normal person out with one punch, but he won’t ever fight like he used to. Tony finds him perched on the window sill with a closed sketchpad staring out at the forest. The door had opened when he knocked, so he knows he’s welcome.

Steve’s room is functional. A few of his drawings are pinned to the wall but otherwise he’s changed nothing about it. Tony tries not to take it as an insult. It makes sense that Steve doesn’t quite feel like this place is home. Steve sets the sketchpad aside and turns to face him, leaning back against the window as he folds his arms across his chest.

“Bucky said he talked to you,” Steve says.

“Gossipy bunch aren’t you?” Tony asks, deflecting out of habit.

Steve just smiles and shakes his head. “He didn’t say about what, he just said to expect you to stop by.”

"How polite.” Tony shifts to lean back against the wall. Words continue to fail him, as if Peter’s sudden appearance in their home has thrown him completely off. In a way, he supposes, it has. “How did you do it? Be there for Bucky when it meant betraying us and putting what you needed aside?”

Steve straightens, arms falling to his sides and hands to his lap. “Bucky was my responsibility. Ever since I pulled him out of that lab in Germany, our roles switched. More than that, he’s my best friend and I couldn’t let him get hurt for something he had no control over. He needed me to help him be human again.”

“But what about what you needed? Peggy had just died, Bruce was gone, how did you just…” Tony gives in and begins to pace. “Peter needs me to be his mentor and be there for him and I can’t because all I can think about is how I’m the one who got him on that damn ship and I’m the reason he…”

“You were supposed to keep him safe and he got hurt, and now he’s probably traumatized in a way that’s never going to leave him.”

“Yes.”

“I know the feeling. That’s why I did whatever Bucky needed me to do so he could heal,” Steve said. “It’s also why I never let him see how much it hurt me to see him like that when I thought it was my fault for not looking for him after he fell. Instead, I went to Sam and Natasha. It sucks. But you don’t really have a choice. Peter’s a kid and you can’t make him responsible for helping you deal with what you both went through.”

It’s a lecture. Tony hates lectures, especially two in one day, but he knows he needs to hear it.

“I fucked up everything for him,” Tony says.

“No you didn’t,” Steve says. “He’s like us. He got dealt a bad hand and now he’s doing the best he can and he’d be in a worst position without your help, I guarantee you. Look, Tony…you need someone to talk to. I can be that for you but I don’t know if you really trust me enough.”

Tony tries to smile but it twists into a grimace. “Yeah, I’m finding all of this terribly uncomfortable.”

"Talk to Bruce then. Or Rhodey. And then be there for Peter because he needs someone and he doesn’t have anyone,” Steve says. “He’s just got you.”

Tony stops, facing the wall. “Remember what you said on the Helicarrier that day? You asked me if it was the first time I’d lost a soldier.”

“Right. And you told me that we’re not soldiers,” Steve says, then lets out a strained sigh. “That…feels like a long time ago.”

"A life time,” Tony says softly. “But I was in denial back then. I didn’t want to be responsible for anyone, not you, not Bruce, not Coulson, not the world.”

“But you chose to anyways,” Steve says. Tony listens to him stand and step closer, just an arm’s reach away. “Tony, you’ve made that choice again and again.”

“I lost Pepper for it,” Tony says, glancing back at him before turning to face him. “I kept saying I would stop this and I can’t so I lost the one good, normal part of my life.”

"And you did it anyways,” Steve says. “You can do this Tony. You can be the support Peter needs. You’re a good person, even if you want to pretend you’re not, and that means you’ll find a way to be what he needs.”

“How can you say that after all of this?” Tony asks.

Steve raises his eyebrows. “Tony, you fought me because you were trying to do right by the world and because you were grieving. I don’t…fault you for having convictions and emotions even if the result was unpleasant for everyone involved. I wish we could’ve trusted each other to talk. None of that makes you a bad person.”

Tony backs away, wiping a hand down his face as he tries to process Steve’s words. “I never did apologize.”

"Me neither,” Steve said. “I am sorry for how it happened, but not for my opinion and not for protecting Buck.”

Tony nods. “I understand. I’m sorry too.”     

Steve reaches out, clasps his shoulder with one firm hand. “Go find Peter, Tony. And when you need someone, you find them.”

After a moment of hesitation, Tony reaches up and covers Steve’s hand with his own. “Thank you.”

Steve smiles and Tony thinks that maybe there’s hope for them yet.

 

-.-

 

He finds Peter outside on the top floor balcony leaning against the metal railing with a white-knuckled grip. For a moment, he just stands and watches. He knows Peter is a child, knows it better than Peter does, but in the heat of battle and life and death situations, it’s hard to think that. Moments like these, Tony can see the worry lines etched into a too young face. He’d done his best to protect Peter, but he’d never been there for him in the way he needed most.

“Hey kid,” Tony says, voice rougher than he wants.

Peter glances at him over his shoulder, gnawing his lower lip, before turning away again. “Hi.”

It’s a hard line to find. He doesn’t want to baby Peter, but he doesn’t want to make him grow up any faster than he already has if he can avoid it.

“I’ll be blunt. I don’t know what you need from me,” Tony says. “But I want to help you.”

He’s not sure what he expected. It’s not Peter turning away and looking back out over the grounds again.

“It’s okay Mr. Stark. I know this is hard for you too,” Peter says, words careful and tone firm. Like he needs to handle Tony with kid gloves.

"You’re right,” Tony says, letting out a long breath as he steps up beside Peter, trying to get them on equal physical footing as well. “It is, but that’s not for you to worry about. Peter, I don’t mean this in a bad way, but you are a child. You’re more mature and a hell of a lot braver than most adults so I’m not going to treat you like you’re too young to know what you’re feeling. But…this isn’t about me. This isn’t my first rodeo.”

“It’s not mine either,” Peter says, voice shaking.

"No, it’s not,” Tony says, reaching out and squeezing Peter’s shoulder. “But you shouldn’t have to go through it on your own because you can’t rely on me. So tell me what you need and I’ll do everything I can to help.”

Peter’s breath inhales quick and sharp. For a moment, Tony feels as though they’re both suspended, caught between tumbling off the edge in an uncontrolled spiral and something survivable. Then Peter’s shoulders roll forward and he drops into a crouch, hands clinging to the railing even as he crouches, forehead pressing to one of the metal grates as he begins to cry but it’s not crying, it’s more than that. The sobs tear out of him, harsh and wet. He shakes and the metal bends under his hands.

Tony drops to his side, focus and clarity coming to him in a way it hadn’t before. He pries Peter’s hands loose and sits on the ground beside him, back to the railing. One of Peter’s arms wraps tight around his knees, but the other stays in the palm of one of Tony’s, like he’s forgotten how to move or pull it away. Like he needs something to remind him he’s not alone.

“Peter…”

“I just want-“ The words cut off around another rough sob and a shaky, gasping inhale. “I just want to be a kid. I never got to be-“

He dissolves into tears again, blunt nails scraping at Tony’s palm. Tony closes his hand and tugs Peter one more time and this time Peter comes, throwing himself into Tony’s arms as he cries. It’s not as hard as he feared to hold him. He wrinkles Tony’s shirt in his clenched fists and soaks his neck in tears and snot but knowing that for the first time in months he’s provided Peter with genuine help makes it worth it.

For a long time, Tony just holds him. He’s out of his element, but he doesn’t mind so much when it’s clear Peter’s out of his element too. In this, at least, they’re on even ground. It’s comforting in its own way because it means he can’t fuck it up.

As Peter’s tears begin to dry up and his breathing evens out, Tony tries to find the right words.

“It’s not right that you got your childhood taken from you,” Tony says, squeezing the back of Peter’s neck. “For any role I played in that I’m sorry. I wish I could find a way to get that back for you because you are one of the kindest, smartest people I know Peter. You deserve that more than anyone. But I can’t do that.”

“I know, Mr. Stark. It’s okay,” Peter says, sighing against his neck and pulling himself closer. “I just…don’t want to have to the strong one all the time.”

“You don’t have to be,” Tony says. He looks up at the sky and pretends his heart doesn’t hurt. “That’s what I’m here for.”

 

-.-

 

Wakanda’s recovery was going well, better than anywhere else. It’s the perfect place to take Peter for the rest of his summer.

Tony folds his arms across his chest as he stares out the lab windows at the large plain where so many of his once former friends had fought in a desperate attempt to save Vision’s life. The earth still carries the scars of the alien machines that had scoured the ground.

“We will fill them one day,” T’Challa says. “For now, the focus has been on our people, and in a way, I suppose it is a good reminder.”

Tony glances over at him. “Reminder of what?”

“In Wakanda, we have grown complacent,” T’Challa says, leaning against the railing that overlooks the lower half of the lab where Shuri leads Peter around, talking with her hands as she goes. “We thought vibranium gave us all the strength and protection we needed but that…that out there is proof that we need to keep improving.”

“I know the feeling,” Tony says. He watches Peter pull up one of the screens and point to something, mouth moving too fast to even try and pick out what he’s saying. Shuri bounces on her heels and swipes the screen away to bring up another.

"It is good of you to bring him here,” T’Challa says. “Shuri takes on too much responsibility sometimes. It will be good for her to have friends close in age and intellect and it will be good for you as well.”

“Hm.”

T’Challa lets out a short laugh and shakes his head. “I am no therapist. But Wakanda has them and they are not the government, or an international group of some kind. If you want me to find someone, I will.”

Tony turns to look at him, arms dropping to his side in a conscious act to at least appear more open. “You did so much for Steve and Bucky, then Vision, and now me and Peter. Why?”

“Because to hoard our resources and only look inwards makes us weak,” T’Challa says. “Wakanda cannot grow the way it needs to without allies both on an individual and national level.”

“So it’s diplomacy,” Tony says.

“Partially,” T’Challa says with a nod. “But…it is selfish too.” He turns back towards the large windows overlooking the outside world. “It is lonely being King and protector. It helps having friends with similar responsibilities and I believe you and I could be fast friends given the time.”

“I think you’re right.”

 

-.-

 

Tony wakes up to light streaming through his window. The light fabric over the windows mute the Wakandan sun but it still chases the remnants of whatever nightmare had tried to cling to his mind. He rolls out of bed, listens to his joints creak and the muscles in his back pull. Sleepless nights found him and T’Challa sparring in one of the palace gyms, but last night he’d slept the night through, stiffening the muscles he’d been working out.

There’s a knock at his bedroom door. He grabs a shirt from off the floor and tugs it over his head before heading for it and pressing the button to let it slide open. Peter stands before him, beaming.

“Hey, Mr. Stark. Shuri said she was going to take me to the mines today. You wanna come?”

Tony smiles. “Sure kid.”

           


End file.
